Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(43)

“Your worst memory, I imagine.”

Ari’s father was there, too, at her mother’s side. “We’re marked. We only have minutes.”

“We have to get beyond the static. Then the signal will reach the rest of the galaxy. And everyone will know. That barrier is going to make it hard to—”

“We’re not going to make it. They’re going to shoot us down,” Ari’s father said, and Ari started crying; the terror that came with this memory was too much. Her mind had blocked it for so many good reasons.

“They have to know the truth!” Ari’s mother yelled.

“Ari,” Merlin’s voice pleaded from beside her. “Where are you? If this is your memory, you must be here.”

Ari didn’t have to answer because at that moment, her father heard small sobs and pulled a tiny Ari from beneath the control panel. Before little Ari could fit into his arms, she ran, out of the room, down the hall, nothing but her parents’ strained shouts behind her.

Little Ari kept running, looking over her shoulder.

“You’re so scared,” Merlin said, as if he’d never felt such fear in all of his many lives.

“I was,” Ari admitted. At that moment, the skinny girl stopped running. She halted in the hallway to look out the porthole at what seemed like solar flares headed straight for them. “But a voice in my head told me where to go. He said I was going to be all right. That was Arthur,” she realized.

Merlin and Ari watched as the tiny girl ducked through the doorway of the hydration circuit just as the airlock clapped tight. A blast sent her across the room with a bone-dislodging shake before the gravity was gone.

Seven-year-old Ari floated, legs tucked in, arms sealed around her tiny body.

Alone.

“Stop this,” Ari begged aloud. “Stop the memory.” She could handle her parents’ last moment. Even the blasts of fire streaking toward them.

But not this part.

The thirst came first, and tiny Ari fought to propel herself into a huge water barrel to swallow the last liquid bubbles floating inside it—but then she could not get back out. The walls were covered in coils of red-hot wires. She tried to push off, the heat so great she flailed and crashed into the other side. And blacked out from the pain. Every few days she tried again, her body stung all over, etched with hundreds of razor-fine circle burns across her back, her arms, her chest.

“Ow,” Merlin mouthed each time she was burned, feeling the agony that came with the memory. “Ari—”

“Quiet,” Ari whispered. “He’s coming.”

A boy’s round face peered over the edge of the barrel. Nine-year-old Kay’s reddish hair was already turning gray, and he cried when he saw Ari’s clothes burned to tatters, her frame frozen in pain, her eyes as wild and glassed as a dying animal’s. He cried so hard he could not help her, but the women who were with him floated in and down, one tethered to the other. The woman closest had a young, kind face and silver hair.

She reached a hand to little Ari, and Ari took it.

The memory began to fade to black, but Ari fought it. Her past misery was a blade, but she would not let go until she’d grasped the handle of her hope. She found herself reaching for the two women, even as they turned translucent. “They spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand, and yet I knew they were saying I would be okay. I couldn’t believe them at first, and when they took me on board their strange, tiny spaceship, I found a podlike bed that swung like my mother’s arms. I never wanted to move. I wanted to die there. But I didn’t.”

Merlin and Ari were in the black nothingness again. He was silent beside her for a long moment. Too long.

“When will we escape these memories?” she asked.

“When Morgana’s magic has worn off.” Merlin sounded distant as if he were busy tucking his feelings into his deep robe pockets, trying to hide them from her.

“Why did she want us to share this, do you think?”

“Because she is cruel.” There, again, Merlin seemed cracked. Ari felt resolved, more determined to defeat this reincarnation thing. This King Arthur cycle. This Mercer nightmare. Whatever it was, it was going down.

“Merlin—”

“He saved you. King Arthur saved you. He told you where to hide on that ship. Like he knew what was going to happen.”

“Yes. Does that mean something?”

“Perhaps.”

Ari felt warm. Something pressed against her, tugged and whispered. She could feel her lips again, her breath, her heartbeat. “Merlin, something’s happening to me. How do you feel?”

“Scared,” he whispered into the moment that ripped them from each other. “Alone. Like always.”

Ari felt herself shouting from the pain of their paired consciousness detaching. Her breath cut in fast and sharp, hampered by lips on her lips.

“Gwen,” she groaned, and Gwen gasped with relief, tugging Ari into a sitting position.

Ari opened her eyes. She was on Error, on Kay’s crumpled bed in the pilot’s cabin. “What happened?”

“That ghost woman attacked you,” Gwen said, smoothing Ari’s hair back and kissing her cheeks, her jaw, her neck. “You’re okay. Thank the stars, you came back.”

“Is everyone else okay?” Ari murmured, her eyes adjusting slowly and painfully to the light in the small room.